Other People's Lives (6 page)

“God damn these gravels for my tires! But here anyway I won't be towed away or have pushings.”

The same sign,
ANTIQUES—R. RELKIN,
hung on a post at the beginning of the driveway. A small, plump, gray-haired woman came rushing down it before Maria had even parked.

“Maria!” she screamed. “Maria, darling! I thought it was your Saab that I saw, but I couldn't believe it and you won't believe why I couldn't believe it. Because naturally I don't believe in ESP, not that everything is always so rational and I absolutely agree with all the wonderful young people who are showing us what false gods we've been worshiping, not that I eat organic food, I love eating too much and don't tell me it doesn't show, but I was thinking of you and Dennis this morning! In fact, I almost called you, but you don't know what the phones are like up here, it's the one thing that drives me crazy and there's nothing you can do about it, don't think I haven't tried—you know my mouth when I get going. Even though I pride myself—I'm always careful to be a lady about it, it's what I always taught my daughters: by example. Because otherwise you're only taking it out on workingmen! Although around here, find me one—
one—
who isn't a Fascist, you should see their faces when they look at you, and I'm always
very
nice. I offer them coffee, beer, anything. Leon always tells me I'm
too
nice, but I can't help it, that's the way I am. And you should see their children! Who do you think breaks all the windows around here? And not just windows! You heard what happened with the Dorfmans' house, and with all their other troubles that's just what they needed! Although Sybil Dorfman—I've always said it and I've said it to
her:
You can't spend your life with your eyes closed. He's a pig, though, there's no question about it, a brilliant pig, but still—! And the pity is the children, especially the little one. How she'll pay them back I don't even want to guess! But what am I telling
you
for, Maria? You know them much better than I do.” Louise thought that Rebecca had stopped, but it was only to rub her hands together and stamp her feet; it made her look like Rumpelstiltskin.

“Dorfman I never even heard of,” Maria said, and, slamming the door of the car, reached in through the back window for the bag of sandwiches.

“Of
course
you did, darling,” Rebecca said, and, with her arm around Maria, propelled her up the gravel path. “But what are we talking out here for? In the cold? Let's go inside. Not that it's so warm in there—the boiler's broken and I'm
aching.
Why do you think I'm dressed like this?”

It was exactly what Louise had been wondering about. No matter what your eye hit—her Laplander's boots, wool Scottish plaid slacks, long Mexican serape pushed over a turtleneck Irish fisherman's sweater, a child's bright red furry earmuffs half covered by a multicolored, flower-filled East European peasant kerchief, Rebecca looked, as Louise stared, like a package that had been sent on from one wrong foreign address to another, receiving at each mistaken customs office its country's distinctive stamp.

“You'll have to forgive me, Maria—I
know
you'll forgive me, with you I don't even have to say it—but everything is in such disorder. I'm half here, I'm half still in the city, sometimes I don't even know
where
I am. Everyone always says to me, I don't know how you can bury yourself in the country like that—you of all people. But I don't
feel
buried. And that's what's important! Here, it's beautiful, the air is beautiful, I can take walks wherever I want to—and I don't have to be afraid. Of course it's true, I loved the city, for me the city was everything. I
loved
my neighborhood, I taught in a
wonderful
school—for thirty-five years, Maria. Did you know that? Thirty-five years!
Everyone
cried when I retired—the janitor, the principal, the elevator man. Cried? Wept! They used up more Board of Education tissue boxes because of me that last week—
I
got back at that God-damn Bureau of Supplies! And the letters—you should have seen the letters I got! From students. From alumni. Begging me, pleading with me not to leave. Young people are wonderful.”

Turning toward Matthew, Julie, and Louise, Maria said, “Rebecca was a history teacher.”

“History? Maria! Darling! I was a
French
teacher—you know that! Of course you have so much on your mind now, don't think I don't understand. Although
lots
of people think I was a history teacher, it's because I
know
so much about it, I've always been so involved. And I've lived through so much of it, I'm practically a part of history myself. Leon's always teasing me about it, he says that's why I'm so interested in antiques, I'm practically an antique myself. Although I'll tell you something, Maria, I'm not so old that I can't be flexible. And that's why young people always gravitate to me, they
feel
it, I'm on their wavelength. I'm like a mother to them, but a mother they can actually
talk
to. That brilliant little Carla Saltzman, she's a hematologist,
she
calls me long distance from
Denver.
She's working on an Indian reservation, I'm
so
proud of her. And when I walk outside here, I don't have to worry about being mugged; I don't know how you stand it, still living on the West Side! With all the druggies and the junkies and with what went on at Columbia. And the way they
look!
Not that I disagree with them—they're brave and they're wonderful and I could never stand to sit in school myself. But they don't
know
anything. They think they
invented
everything. Everything! What do they think
we
did in the thirties? Do they think we didn't also have bodies? Or beds? And sometimes
not
beds, because, believe me, then parents didn't just hand over money and apartments and houses. I'll never forget—right in the middle of the woods in that broken-down camp, Leon thought I looked so innocent, was
he
in for a surprise…
We
called it free love, it
had
to be free. It was still the Depression. And politics, too—the Spanish Civil War! They weren't even
born
yet.”

Rebecca's arm was still around Maria; they had reached the house, but continued standing outside it. In her cold and discomfort, Louise concentrated on the odd quality of Rebecca's voice: she had quacked French verbs at students for so many years that now, without knowing it, she could not stop the quacking. Worse, she plowed down on words and consonants with lingering lopsided lips and with her tongue emphasized the sounds that students, in a dictation, might have forgotten to underline.

Maria said, “It's all, I think, different here now, Rebecca. You had always on the left side your studio.”

“
Studio! Please,
Maria! You think I didn't know what I had there? It was a shed! A shed is a shed. And it was all right for the summers, but as soon as I decided that I would really be
up
here I knew I had to have something different. And Leon wouldn't let me sit all day in what was practically an outhouse, so I'm building a marvelous showroom that's an addition to the house, and it was designed by a
brilliant
boy from Yale Architecture School. You probably know him—Jesse Sandweiss. He's young and marvelous and full of wonderful, creative ideas and he comes from a wonderful family, I always loved him and told them to have faith in him, no matter what! And I did, and I was right, and there's nothing he won't do for me. But there's nothing he can do about the builder! Who's a crook and a reactionary, you should see his pig eyes and his German wife and it frightens me to even
think
of their children someday in a ballot box. And that's why you have to forgive me—because most of my good stuff is still in the shed, and all because of that lousy builder the showroom is freezing and you won't have anything to see.”

“I can't anyway afford things, Rebecca. It's not why I came.”

“I know, darling. Who can? It's a terrible time and I saw it coming—I lived through one Depression and now I'm living through another! I
warned
Leon. We lost so much money, I saw all the signs and our broker feels
terrible.
He's a wonderful boy—Bobby Meltzer. We've known his father since God knows when and you can imagine how
he
feels! He gave him all his business—and after all that, Bobby lost everything. Everything! Of course it's not his fault—it's the times, it's economics. But he's a very sensitive boy, Bobby. Not that he's a boy any more. He has a wife and three little babies. And his wife is marvelous. From a
very
wealthy family. And with her taste and her background she can't stay away from me and my beautiful things. She loves my attitude about life—you know, with that kind of money there isn't always a lot of warmth in the home—Ooh! Did you hear that? It's the phone! I can hear it through my earmuffs. Let me quick run and answer it! Come on!”

Inside, stamping her feet from the snow and the cold, Rebecca disappeared—even more like Rumpelstiltskin—through a swinging door, leaving them all in her large, chilly showroom. It was wood-beamed but mostly empty-two small antique chests and a highboy stood to one side, and several sets of andirons were laid out before an unfinished fireplace. Exactly in the center, like a stage set, were an old kitchen table, a few ordinary chairs, and a potbelly stove.

“A
Koche Ofen!
” Maria said. “It's what we had at my cousin Klaus'. You heat up the bricks and it makes you then very warm. Not, you know,
so
warm, but better.”

Matthew said, “Mommy, Jamie Laufer. When can we ask her?”

“As soon as she comes off the phone, angel, I promise. You can have now the sandwiches, yes, baby?”

Julie, who had zipped up her fatigue jacket and pulled her wool cap down so that it covered her face almost entirely, looked around the bare room and said, “Typical. Absolutely typical. Andirons and no fire! I can't believe it—it's exactly what my mother would do. Except that we did have a real fire and a fireplace. In the country.”

“She would have, I think, a fire, Julie. Only she doesn't yet have the fireplace finished. If you stand near to the stove you'll be warmer.”

Maria herself was not standing close to the stove but was sitting on a faded upholstered wing chair that she had pulled up to the table; to Louise she seemed suddenly faded, too. Her hair was disheveled, her shoulders were hunched, and the yellowish, lined raincoat that she always wore was half open as if she were unaware of the cold. Her arms were spread out on the table, but the heavy canvas sandwich bag still hung from one of her wrists. She seemed caught in an odd, unconscious oblivion: her face and body drained, her eyes far away. Had she sat this way once at her cousin Klaus'? When she was
very
skinny? Sleet began hitting the wide, unshaded windows and one of Matthew's Magic Markers fell; the sounds were simultaneous.

“I love fireplaces,” Julie said. “I really love them. I mean the real kind—with a fire in it, like the one we had in the country. It was
so
beautiful—I used to sit there in front of it, watching it for hours and hours. You know what I just flashed to? The pictures in children's books! I used to just stare and stare at the fire and sort of turn the pages in the books and get so high that I would really get into those pictures. I mean really
into
them, like I was
inside
of them. They were very stoned.”

How do you like to go up in a swing,

Up in the air so blue?

Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing

Ever a child can do!

It was what Louise's mother had read to her—and read very quickly, in obvious annoyance. Her accent had been more noticeable even to Louise, and seemed so especially now in remembering it: her fair-skinned, distant mother in a blue-green suit, sitting on a park bench in the playground, with one hand rapidly turning pages, with the other shielding her eyes—not from the sun, but from the sight of the sandbox, which offended her. The noises offended her, too: the gossiping women, the crying children, the planes overhead, the trains underneath.

“We had for children
terrible
books,” Maria said. “Always ugly, always punishings. Struwwelpeter! Max and Moritz! Only bad children and only terrible things to happen to them. Fairy tales, too.
Not
like here—Grimm stories they make very different in America. I
know—
from reading them to Matthew. Do you remember, Matthew? When I read to you those witches stories? No? I think probably you're only hungry,
that's
maybe the trouble. Yes, baby? What do you think?”

“Maria, guess who that was! It was Leon!” said Rebecca, pushing through the swinging door with the force of her clothes and her voice. “I told him you were here and he sends his love and I told him how amazing it was that you're here because I was just thinking of calling you this morning because of Elliot. And I said, ‘See! You can never tell what'll happen!' but he wasn't surprised at all because I can
always
tell. And we're so proud of Elliot! I said, ‘Call up Elliot right now and tell him that Maria will be glad to tell him everything that he needs to know.' Because I know you would, I don't even have to ask you, and anyway you're exactly the right person.”

Maria was unwrapping the sandwiches. She raised her head and said, “Rebecca, this is Julie Dresner and this is Louise Weil. But I think I don't know who is Elliot.”

“Maria! You know Elliot—my wonderful, brilliant nephew—really he's Leon's nephew, and we're so proud of him and we always were, even when his mother used to complain that he was too quiet and he wouldn't talk to her, and who could blame him! I wouldn't talk to her, either, she never shuts up, she's one of those really over-protective,
you
know what I mean—
smothering
mothers, so naturally he had to retreat into his books and his studies, and now even
she
has to admit that she's proud of him for what he got. But we're even more proud of him because not only did he get it but also now, finally, he'll really be able to get away from her. And you'll see how he'll flower! I told him never mind if she carries on before he goes, it'll be good for her.”